Roxanne's Turtle

I rarely have a bad day on the job. Earlier this week I had a memorable great day: four children came in and one girl named Roxanne was their self-appointed spokesperson. They were on a mission. The construction foreman at a local home-building site put a turtle into their hands and asked them to take care of it. He’d found it under a log. They wanted to identify it and learn how to take care of it. They quickly identified it as a box turtle from the pictures in a book I pulled for them. They were without their library cards and with grubby hands, so I printed off box turtle care instructions from a reliable internet site. Roxanne scanned over it, and then read it aloud to the group. I asked them, it they possibly could, to bring the turtle by so I could see it, as I love turtles.

Lo and behold, several hours later, one of the children came running in and asked me to come out and see: they had followed the instructions to a T. The handsome box turtle was in a large nearly clear plastic crate with two inches of dirt, a few nicely placed rocks and several raspberries. And, he was happily munching on one of the raspberries!
A small crowd wrapped itself around the turtle in keen admiration. One gentleman named Mr. Guy, explained how, in his Native American culture, the 13 big sections of the turtle’s shell represent the 13 months of their calendar year, and that the 28 small sections encompassing the bottom edge of the shell represent the days of the month.
The turtle was a beautiful one: it had bright yellow markings and was a full-sized specimen, about six inches long and three-and-a half inches high. I hoped the children would release it before too long and a few days later, when they came in, they told me they had and it ventured off into a nearby field.

The whole event happened so quickly that it never occurred to me to take a photograph. However, I have a wonderful memory of those children, the handsome turtle, and Mr. Guy.